This body makes all sorts of important decisions about the Unicode standard—decisions that affects many aspects of our projects. If an issue were to come up that adversely affected us, we would not have a formal way to object at the moment. Being a liason member gives us official standing with the organization, allowing us to participate alongside Google, Apple, and Microsoft in any Unicode-related discussions that are important to us.

Other open sources projects that are currently liaison members: The GNOME Foundation The Mozilla Project OpenOffice.org

I'm not sure if there is any fee for becoming a liaison member. The instructions simply say to "contact the Unicode Office for details". Would it be worth contacting them to find out?

Ryan Kaldari wrote: > I'm not sure who would be in charge of this, but I think it would be > useful if the WMF was a liaison member of the Unicode Constortium: > http://unicode.org/consortium/memblogo.html> > This body makes all sorts of important decisions about the Unicode > standard—decisions that affects many aspects of our projects. If an > issue were to come up that adversely affected us, we would not have a > formal way to object at the moment. Being a liason member gives us > official standing with the organization, allowing us to participate > alongside Google, Apple, and Microsoft in any Unicode-related > discussions that are important to us. > > Other open sources projects that are currently liaison members: > The GNOME Foundation > The Mozilla Project > OpenOffice.org > > I'm not sure if there is any fee for becoming a liaison member. The > instructions simply say to "contact the Unicode Office for details". > Would it be worth contacting them to find out? > > Ryan Kaldari

Looks appropiate, although I don't really see a potential for problems. This proposal should be sent up to the board.

> I'm not sure who would be in charge of this, but I think it would be > useful if the WMF was a liaison member of the Unicode Constortium: > http://unicode.org/consortium/memblogo.html> > This body makes all sorts of important decisions about the Unicode > standardâ€”decisions that affects many aspects of our projects. If an > issue were to come up that adversely affected us, we would not have a > formal way to object at the moment. Being a liason member gives us > official standing with the organization, allowing us to participate > alongside Google, Apple, and Microsoft in any Unicode-related > discussions that are important to us. > > Other open sources projects that are currently liaison members: > The GNOME Foundation > The Mozilla Project > OpenOffice.org > > I'm not sure if there is any fee for becoming a liaison member. The > instructions simply say to "contact the Unicode Office for details". > Would it be worth contacting them to find out? >

I think that'd be worth doing; I had a great chat with Michael Everson at our Berlin meetup (Michael's been involved in lots of Unicode standardization stuff over the years and has many tales to tell :) and it definitely sounds like it would be useful for us to be a little more on the inside at times to help push on requirements for specific language support, or making sure that concerns about labeling, character types, and normalization (shudder) get looked at and addressed.

In comparison, we have a couple of folks who keep an eye on some of the W3C / WHATWG lists that are working on the HTML 5 specifications -- these are mostly open lists which made it easier for particularly interested individuals like Aryeh & Tim to pop on either for specific issues or just as voracious list readers. ;)

Unicode's development has traditionally been a little more closed and old-fashioned -- not a horrible thing for something as delicate as the universal character set! -- but it does mean that if we want to be involved, we need to work with the system to make sure that we're heard.

I'll see if we can figure out who gets jurisdiction internally on this. :)

On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 5:10 PM, Brion Vibber <brion [at] pobox> wrote: > In comparison, we have a couple of folks who keep an eye on some of the W3C > / WHATWG lists that are working on the HTML 5 specifications -- these are > mostly open lists which made it easier for particularly interested > individuals like Aryeh & Tim to pop on either for specific issues or just as > voracious list readers. ;)

It looks like it would cost $7,900 a year in dues, if I read right. But the benefits in practice are pretty small:

* You get a seat on the Advisory Committee, which doesn't mean much because it's already fairly large. Would be nice to have more open-source-friendly organizations there, but one more wouldn't make a big difference. * Wikimedia employees can join W3C Working Groups. This doesn't really matter because the specs that matter to the web (HTML, CSS, SVG) are all developed in public anyway, and anyone can provide feedback in some form, and members other than browser implementers don't have much de facto control. It would only matter if someone wanted to actually edit a spec or something.

So it's not a huge amount of money, but probably not worth it except maybe for making a pro-standards statement.

>>>>> "AG" == Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+wikilist [at] gmail> writes: AG> It looks like it would cost $7,900 a year in dues I think that would set a bad precedent for the way you fellows spend your money. Next thing you know people will say you joined A, now why don't you join B, even more worthy, etc. P.S., It is spelled Consortium.

BTW, I found out that liaison membership in the Unicode Consortium is free (and doesn't require us to do anything specifically). You just have to convince them that the membership would be beneficial to both organizations. Since it sounds like no one objects, I'd be happy to go ahead and write something up and get in touch with them about it.

Ryan Kaldari

On 6/27/11 6:18 PM, jidanni [at] jidanni wrote: >>>>>> "AG" == Aryeh Gregor<Simetrical+wikilist [at] gmail> writes: > AG> It looks like it would cost $7,900 a year in dues > I think that would set a bad precedent for the way you fellows spend > your money. Next thing you know people will say you joined A, now why > don't you join B, even more worthy, etc. P.S., It is spelled Consortium. > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l [at] lists > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

BTW, I found out that liaison membership in the Unicode Consortium is free (and doesn't require us to do anything specifically). You just have to convince them that the membership would be beneficial to both organizations. Since it sounds like no one objects, I'd be happy to go ahead and write something up and get in touch with them about it.

Ryan Kaldari

On 6/27/11 6:18 PM, jidanni [at] jidanni wrote: >>>>>> "AG" == Aryeh Gregor<Simetrical+wikilist [at] gmail> writes: > AG> It looks like it would cost $7,900 a year in dues > I think that would set a bad precedent for the way you fellows spend > your money. Next thing you know people will say you joined A, now why > don't you join B, even more worthy, etc. P.S., It is spelled Consortium. > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l [at] lists > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

On 7/19/2011 2:41 PM, Ryan Kaldari wrote: > The Wikimedia Foundation is now an official liaison member of the > Unicode Consortium: > http://www.unicode.org/consortium/memblist.html#liais> > Rick McGowan is the Unicode representative to Wikimedia, and I'll be > serving as Wikimedia's respresentative to Unicode until our new > localization engineers come on board. > > Ryan Kaldari > Awesome!

It's about time that Wikimedia, such a leader in multilingual text, has got some input into the process.